# Robert Cooksey > Strategic Product Leader | Driving Product Innovation with Emerging Technology and Design | Former Founder and ex-Intel Location: San Bruno, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/robertcooksey I've built 0→1 products and scaled platforms at roles in startups, Fortune 500 enterprise, and higher education. I thrive at the intersection of technology and design where concepts adapt to real-world conditions. I help teams turn ambiguity into impact by aligning product strategies with business objectives, delivering user-centric solutions that people love. In my most recent role at Core Impact, I led end-to-end product lifecycle management and spearheaded go-to-market strategies for wearable AI + SaaS systems for elite athletes, securing buy-in from customers and investors. At Intel, I drove human-centric design for robotics and multimodal experiences, launching eight products including RealSense 3D cameras, the Neural Compute Stick, and the Robotics SDK. I also pioneered new interaction modalities and applications for machine perception and physical AI. This pathfinding work has become part of products, informed executive decision-making, and has been showcased as brand-defining experiences in CES keynotes and at Intel headquarters. I believe the most meaningful products are created through thoughtful design and deep technical fluency cultivated in cross-functional collaboration informed and tested by users. My methods lie in combining data-driven insights with experience design to create impactful products that address market needs. Whether designing robotics SDKs at Intel, driving product-market fit at Core Impact, or building a top-ranked Game Art + Design program at Ringling College, my mission has been to empower teams, enhance customer acquisition, and deliver exceptional results. Open to senior product leadership roles in AI, emerging technology and innovation strategy. If you aim to build purposeful experiences or transformative products, especially in spaces that involve the behavior of organic or synthetic agents, reach out. ## Work Experience ### Head of Product | Product Strategy, Go-to-Market Execution, and User Experience Design @ Currently Seeking New Opportunities Jan 2025 – Present With a strong focus on innovation and user experience, I have successfully aligned product strategies with business objectives while driving cross-functional collaboration. My efforts in executing efficient go-to-market plans have led to reduced launch timelines and improved customer acquisition with first of a kind products. I am passionate about fostering a culture of data-driven insights that empowers teams to excel and deliver exceptional results. ### COO & Head of Product | Strategic Go-to-Market Leadership, Product Market Fit, Product Execution @ Core Impact Inc Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 Core Impact enables data-driven decision-making for athletes and organizations with real-time actionable athletic performance insights about the physical motivations of sport performance, including muscle activation, heart rate, and respiratory rate. Its Digital Athlete Ecosystem (DAE) provides a sophisticated wearable system to improve performance analytics, injury-prevention and recovery workflows. Led product lifecycle, technology, and business operations. End-to-end owner for the go-to-market strategy, product experience, research and development, and B2B and D2C pipelines. This role fused expertise in user experience research and design, hardware-software integration, sensor-embedded garments, and AI-powered data analysis to meet the rigorous demands of high-performance sports. Responsibilities included product, technology, and organizational management. - Spearheaded the transformation of product concepts into market-ready solutions by delivering a comprehensive proof-of-concept that integrated all core components seamlessly into the user experience. - Developed go-to-market strategies that included pricing structures for both wearable technology and SaaS platforms to maximize revenue potential and market penetration. - Managed cross-functional teams to realize a baseball wearable MVP and accompanying SaaS mobile app while ensuring alignment with business objectives and user needs. - Collaborated closely with the CEO to secure high-profile athlete endorsements and investor funding, enhancing brand visibility and credibility within the competitive sports technology landscape. - Refined Ideal Customer Profiles and user journeys to identify high-value features, eliminating friction points for athletes and coaches while improving overall engagement with the product. - Guided product development to achieve alignment with business goals while creating a highly desirable solution that resonates with athletes and elite baseball organizations. ### Product Experience Architect for Robotics Portfolio | Product Management, UX Research & Design @ Intel Corporation Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | United States The Intel Robotics SDK provides software packages and pre-validated hardware modules for sensor data ingestion, classification, environment modeling, action planning, action control. Built on the Robot Operating System 2, it also features reference algorithms and working examples. The Robotics SDK addresses industrial, manufacturing, consumer market, and smart cities use cases, facilitating data collection, storage, and analytics across various nodes on the factory floor. - Architected product experience for global autonomous mobile robotics SDK team across six initial releases, resulting in first hardware partner robotic development kit launch within one year and expanded responsibility for all Intel robotics products. - Developed and executed an outside-in data acquisition strategy using field studies and user research to define key robotics product value propositions and to prioritize high-impact development efforts, increasing net promoter scores by 40%. - Redesigned the out-of-box solution (mission critical KPI) in collaboration with engineering, achieving a 400% improvement in install time for the autonomous mobile robot product, surpassing competition and setting best-in-class benchmark. - Executed product landscape mapping and user journey development, synthesizing stakeholder and user input for impactful feature definitions, achieving 95% stakeholder alignment on prioritized features. - Orchestrated an efficient, cross-functional framework, uniting UX, engineering, project management, and CI/CD teams, which cut product documentation time per release from four weeks to under one week and becoming a model for other teams. ### Senior Experience Architect | User Experience Design, Prototyping, AI Integration @ Intel Corporation Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | Santa Clara, CA Pioneered novel multi-modal user experiences for Intel's generative AI architecture on an advanced projects team reporting directly to VP Raja Koduri. - Built four end-to-end prototype demonstrations, receiving positive feedback from executive leadership and company-wide visibility. - Prototyped an interactive PoC for deictic pronoun disambiguation (this, that, these, etc.) in mixed reality applications, achieving a 90% accuracy rate on identifying correct referents in controlled testing scenarios and resulting in the "Best Talk" award for Intel's internal audio AI conference. - Led design efforts on SoundVision, an AI-powered creative suite that accelerated design and development pipelines for mixed reality experiences, tripling team velocity within twelve months through streamlined workflows. - Transformed visitor experience at Intel headquarters via touchless interactive systems, spatial compute behaviors, machine perception, and AI-driven interactive experiences, reducing the novel system downtime by 320% and accelerating average system recovery times from above 24 hours to less than 60 minutes while attracting agency attention as a model for corporate HQ experiences. ### Senior Experiential Designer | Brand Strategy, Experiential Marketing, AI Technologies @ Intel Corporation Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Santa Clara, California The Agency Inside, established in 2014, was tasked with modernizing Intel’s half-century-old brand to make it more innovative and appealing. Through high-profile marketing campaigns such as Super Bowl advertisements, the agency elevated Intel’s position on global brand rankings like Interbrand. They also leveraged celebrity partnerships and integrated technology into live events to better connect with millennial audiences. Notably, Agency Inside orchestrated the 2018 Winter Olympics drone show, which led to Intel achieving the highest levels of engagement on Facebook and Twitter during the event. - Designed Intel-branded marketing activations ($250k - $1M/project) to showcase machine perception and AI technologies integrating Intel products across groups and divisions. - Delivered pitches to senior/executive management. - Recruited and directed cross-functional teams. - Managed relationships across business units. - Realized 3 unique HQ lobby experiences, the 2018 CES Keynote pre-show, and a live stage event with Tiësto for Ultra Miami. ### Research Scientist and Product Innovator | Edge and IoT Applications, AI Integrations, Prototyping @ Intel Corporation Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Santa Clara, CA Intel’s Modular Innovation Group (MIG), part of the New Technology Group, incubated plug-and-play computing modules to slash prototype cycles and drive early-stage product innovation for IoT and edge-AI applications. By abstracting complex silicon into developer-friendly form factors—like the first-gen Movidius Neural Compute Stick, the Intel Joule and Curie compute modules, and VPU server cards — MIG enabled rapid AI, computer vision, and IoT experimentation. These early innovations shortened development cycles, validated emerging markets, and bridged R&D to scalable product roadmaps. - Managed customer research, testing, and developer experience for the first generation Movidius Neural Compute Stick, selling over 200% of the intended manufacture number, leading to a second-generation product, and inspiring a VPU server card product line. - Championed product experience for the Joule product, driving developer experience improvements resulting in a 5 star rating on Amazon (if excepting negative reviews for the product’s early discontinuation) and with Makezine calling Joule Intel’s “Most Powerful and Versatile Dev Board Yet.” ### RealSense Experience Design Lead | UX & Interaction Design, Computer Vision, Ecosystem Development @ Intel Corporation Jan 2012 – Jan 2016 | Santa Clara, CA Intel RealSense Technology equips machines with advanced depth perception and spatial awareness, enabling them to interpret and interact with their environment intelligently. Through a combination of vision processors, depth cameras, and tracking modules—supported by a flexible, developer-friendly SDK—RealSense powers autonomous navigation, object recognition, and real-time decision-making in robots, drones, AR/VR devices, and biometrics. In 2025, Intel RealSense completed its spinout from Intel Corporation and began operating as an independent company, RealSense. - Invented a wearable device using 3D cameras and haptic motors to assist the visually impaired in navigating dynamic spaces. Managed a cross-functional team to develop and test prototypes. Demonstrated by CEO at CES keynote in 2015. Open sourced and now in real-world testing as the LEO belt by the medical research community. - Crafted the first-generation RealSense Out-of-Box Experience to quickly and playfully teach users to interact with and understand spatial compute, collaborating with Grammy nominated composer Austin Wintory. - Shipped LEGO Portal Racers as lead game designer in collaboration with Metaio (Apple acquisition) and LEGO Future of Play group, leading to Digitaltrends writing, “intuitive enough that anyone could sit down and get going with little to no instruction. That was the developer’s goal here, and the team nailed it.” - Established interaction guidelines for HCI using depth-sensing cameras, influencing spatial compute interactions for two product lines, supporting RealSense to become the industry default 3D camera solution. - Researched, and prototyped new usages for depth sensing cameras internally and with external IP stakeholders, such as major media/publishing partners. - Defined RealSense cabin applications for automotive, including driver safety, improved driver performance, and driver and passenger cabin experiences. - Improved Developer Experience (DX) for the SDK ### Founder & Principal Director for Interactive | Creative Management, Product & Interaction Design @ Big Bang Robot Jan 2009 – Jan 2012 We are a media production team with experience across film, the web and mobile devices, in technology, design, and production. We specialize in crafting custom solutions that fit and grow with the emerging needs of an organization, and we design to fit a present or desired culture. What do you wish you could just do? We help you do that. ### Founding Faculty - Game Art + Design | Program and Curriculum Development @ Ringling College of Art and Design Jan 2006 – Jan 2012 Ringling College's Game Art and Design major is focused on providing students with the professional artistic skills necessary to create compelling and believable interactive experiences. - Drove program growth from concept to the top-ranked program for production in 6 years, generating ~$10M in revenue. - Enhanced the program's reputation by generating a network of successful alumni in film, games, AR/VR/XR, and AI. - Forged a comprehensive curriculum that attracted top talent and industry partnerships. ### Manager for Development and Support | Management, Research Computing, Instructional Technology @ University of South Florida Jan 2002 – Jan 2007 - Built and led a high-performing team focused on developing and supporting research and instructional technologies for a diverse university community. - Implemented innovative solutions that enhanced the educational experience for over 40,000 students across multiple campuses. - Fostered collaboration between departments to streamline technology integration, resulting in improved efficiency and user satisfaction. ## Education ### MA in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought The European Graduate School ### BA in History and Philosophy New College of Florida ### Broward College ### Ringling College of Art and Design ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/cooksey --- Source: https://flows.cv/robertcooksey JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/robertcooksey/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13